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CT Startup Brewery: Outer Light Brewing Company

March 03 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford CT Lifestyle 0 comments Tags: brewery, Connecticut, CT, how to start a brewery, Outer Light Brewing Company, small business, starting a brewery in Connecticut, starting a brewery in CT, startup

Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price spoke with Outer Light Brewing Company Co-Founder Matt Ferrucci about how the brewery got started, challenges the startup has faced, and plans for future growth.

NAN PRICE: Give us the basics of how the business got started and when it opened.

MATT FERRUCCI: My partner Tom Drejer and I met through a mutual friend in the 1990s. We both started homebrewing in college and independently became passionate—almost borderline fanatical—about making beer and sharing it with our friends.

In the back of our minds, we both knew we wanted to start our own business. We just weren’t sure what that would be.

In 2012, Connecticut changed the regulatory framework for breweries, allowing breweries to sell pints of their own beer in an on-site taproom. It changed the underlying business plan pretty dramatically—that’s why you’re seeing a lot of these startup breweries all over Connecticut, it helps you pay the bills when you’re getting started.

Tom and I saw an opportunity to parlay our passion for beer into a new business, so we went for it and put together a plan in 2013. It took us almost two years from writing our plan to opening our doors in April 2015, which is when our beer went on tap.

NP: Is that two-year time period because you were being really thorough with the business plan or is it because you were getting the money together?

MF: It was a little of everything. We were almost too thorough. We were trying to put together a plan and explore locations. Once we found our location and got the funding together, we spent a good chunk of time waiting for the federal government and the state authorities to sign off on the project and our waiting for our brewer’s license to come through.

As we were waiting, we spent nights and weekends building out the brewery. That’s why it took close to two years. We never thought it would take quite that long, but that’s how long it took.

NP: You opened in 2015. How has the brewery evolved since then?

MF: We opened in April 2015 with just one beer on tap. Since then, we’ve added enough tanks to double our capacity. And now we usually have 10 to 12 beer styles available in our tasting room.

We started out by self-distributing our product to bars and restaurants locally, but decided to hand over distribution rights county by county throughout the state of Connecticut.

NP: Is your beer only available in Connecticut?

MF: That’s right, we’re only in Connecticut right now. Basically it’s just bars and restaurants right now, and in liquor stores only in our hometown in and around Groton. We are investing in a canning line, so by this summer, four of our year-round beers will be available in liquor stores across Connecticut.

NP: Do you plan to expand distribution to other states beyond Connecticut?

MF: Yes. We are definitely talking about it. A lot of people who work in the New London area and live in Rhode Island know about Outer Light Brewing. So Rhode Island is probably our next natural step. But our focus for the immediate term is to ensure that we have enough product to meet the demand in Connecticut.

NP: You mentioned there are many breweries cropping up throughout Connecticut. What makes yours unique?

MF: It kind of goes back to how we got started. Every business model is different, but a lot of breweries try to bootstrap. So they start small, they invest, they grow, and they keep swapping out equipment. We decided we wanted to come in with a little more capacity to be able to service the state of Connecticut.

We also decided early on that—even though we were experienced homebrewers—we felt strongly that we needed to complement our team with someone with commercial brewing experience.

Making great craft beer is way more than just having a recipe. We were fortunate enough to find our head brewer, Tyler Cox, who is originally from North Carolina. He helped us get up to speed on commercial brewing. His style is also from North Carolina, which is a little different than the types of beers are made around here. So our beers have a style and a different type of quality you may not always see in the Connecticut beer scene.

Also, Tom and I have a passion to get outside—camp, hike, surf, etc.—and we’re trying to build a brand that connects people to those experiences they enjoy outside. If that includes craft beer, great. We want them to think of us. So we’re trying to build a lifestyle brand, which not a lot of breweries do. And that’s a constant evolution.

NP: How are you marketing?

MF: We’re obsessed with making a product that satisfies the public palette and making a quality product. We feel strongly that that attention to detail helps spread our brand and our brewery’s name across Connecticut.

We don’t do a lot of traditional marketing right now. We’re not doing any paid advertising. It’s more word-of-mouth, grassroots marketing. That may change as our product gets into liquor stores—we may have to change that strategy.

We have a “boots on the ground approach” to marketing our product to the right types of accounts. So once or twice a week, Tom and I will go out to places where we think Outer Light beers might do well and form relationships with different types of people there.

We also participate in events and interact with the public when it makes sense for our brand. So we attend beer festivals and participate in beer dinners, educational classes, beer and cheese pairings, and other events.

NP: Do you rely heavily on social media?

MF: We do. A bulk of our marketing is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We are posting at least once or twice a day on all of those accounts and we’ve built a pretty good following. Each social media tool has its plusses and minuses, but overall it’s a great way to continue the conversation with your customers and potential customers.

NP: A lot of breweries start using a social media presence to build a following even before they open.

MF: That was definitely the case for us. As Tom and I were building the brewery, we were posting pictures and teasing it out. Before we even opened we had 1,000 people following us. We had a mug club that sold out the first day we opened—before people even tried the beer.

NP: That seems fairly common, I’ve heard the beer snobs in the area really have their ears to the ground and they’re looking for new things to try.

MF: Right. People enjoy the variety. Outer Light Brewing has license #14 for breweries in Connecticut. The number of startup breweries keeps growing.

NP: It’s astronomically growing.

MF: Yes. I think it’s a great time for people to enjoy craft beer and the variety. There’s so much out there you never have to drink the same thing twice if you don’t want to.

NP: Let’s talk about you as an entrepreneur and the brewery as a startup. What would you say is the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a startup?

Outer Light Brewing Company in Groton, CT

MF: Trying to match the availability of our product with demand is a huge challenge. It’s trying to shoot an arrow at moving target while you’re riding a horse in the middle of the night—and you’re blindfolded. It’s hard to figure out demand when demand is ebbing and flowing.

There are constantly new breweries entering the state of Connecticut from out of the state and there is always new product out there. So we want to make sure the people who want to get our beer are able to. And that’s not always the case right now.

Another big challenge is trying to get everything done with finite resources. We started with just Tom, Tyler, and me. Now there are five full-time people on our payroll and two part-time people. We’re trying to make sure that everything that needs to get done gets done. There’s only so many people and so much time and so much money. That’s probably an answer you get from many entrepreneurs. It’s a very real struggle.

NP: What’s it really like to be an entrepreneur?

MF: It’s cliché, but it’s definitely a roller coaster. The ups and downs are way more extreme than I could’ve imagined. It’s starting to get a little less crazy, but it’s definitely one hell of a fun roller coaster ride to be on. I wish I had done it sooner. It’s fun.

NP: Where do you see the future in the next couple of years?

MF: I think we need to make a decision once we’re on the liquor store shelves. Are we able to meet the demand in Connecticut? And if we are, then we need to explore expanding to Rhode Island and our neighboring states. But only after we’re able to meet the demand in Connecticut.

We are interested in growing. When we built out the brewery, we created in infrastructure that allows us to increase capacity pretty easily. Basically, we can purchase additional fermentation tanks, plug them in, and brew more beer. So we’re able to get bigger if that’s what we want to do. We probably won’t really come to that fork in the road until later in 2017.

Learn more about Outer Light Brewing Company by visiting www.outerlightbrewing.com or follow on Facebook,  Instagram @outerlightbrewing, and Twitter @outerlightbrews.

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Startup Improv Troupe Finds Its Place in Hartford

February 20 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford CT Lifestyle 0 comments Tags: community, Connecticut, CT, entrepreneur, Hartford, how to launch a startup, startup advice, startup business

Julia Pistell is Co-Founding Member and Managing Director at Sea Tea Improv. (Photo courtesy Chion Wolf)

Julia Pistell, Co-Founding Member and Managing Director at Sea Tea Improv, spoke with Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price about the challenges and rewards of launching a startup—and the importance of having a good laugh.

NAN PRICE: How did you go from being a group of people performing comedy to launching a startup?

JULIA PISTELL: We started organically. The seven founding members were taking improv classes at Hartford Stage. And like other entrepreneurs, we saw a gap. We realized there was no place in the Hartford area for aspiring or advancing comedians to get a lot of stage time. We all just wanted to do more comedy. It was that simple.

We did a couple of shows through Hartford Stage and gradually started doing monthly shows at City Steam. After a few years, we had grown a large audience, so we opened up teaching studios.

The mission of Sea Tea Improv has always been to “build, train, and lead a dedicated community of improvisers,” so opening our studios really helped us find that community.

After we opened those studios, we continued to grow our audience and started to really foster the talent and paths of other local comedians. We decided to open a theater once we had enough comedians that we knew we could create a good enough product for the city of Hartford.

We launched a Kickstarter for an improv theater in Hartford back in April 2015, which very quickly became the most successful improv Kickstarter of all time—isn’t that cool? We immediately negotiated our lease and began the buildout, and just opened our doors in August 2016.

NP: Let’s talk about developing the business concept.

JP: Sea Tea Improv officially became a company in April 2009. We worked on a business plan right away, which I think is the reason we’re still here today. We immediately treated it as something very serious—and something where we would have to simultaneously grow our audience and our talent.

At the time, most people in Connecticut had a little familiarity with improv, but they didn’t really know what it was. So we had to create awareness, get people to come to our shows, and become talented enough to maintain that audience. We were thinking: We’ll get good enough to do this professionally, if you’ll come and see our shows.

It was a big, bold leap of faith. That’s one of our principles: Make bold choices.

Our business plan was centered on growing the community around our product. We were always questioning: How can we be inclusive? How can we make people in the audience feel comfortable? How can we grow the love of the art form in the audience and the community? That’s how we grew organically. And it worked!

NP: Can we talk about funding?

JP: Sure. A lot of people think we are a nonprofit because we’re an arts organization, but we’re not. We’re an LLC.

Our costs are very low. We don’t have lights, sets, costumes, or any of the normal theater stuff. We essentially just pay our people, our rent, and related expenses. Right now our costs are now mostly covered by our ticket sales, class sales, and training, which is great.

In the past we’ve gotten some grants at times where we needed a big leap. And we currently have a loan for the build out of our space.

Also, we did a Kickstarter when we were planning on opening the space. It became the most successful improv-related Kickstarter in Kickstarter history.

We had this hugely successful Kickstarter, but it doesn’t cover the cost of the space. No way! So you have to communicate with your audience that just because we raised what looks like a tremendous amount of money doesn’t mean we are rolling dough. Things are expensive.

I come from nonprofits, where donors and customers often treat “overhead” as a dirty word. People don’t want to think of their money as going to electric bills, toilet paper, and even payroll—but these are the costs of running a space. Just like any arts organization, we have the costs of running and staffing our spaces (in this case, the theater and the eight rooms we rent as teaching studios). It adds up. I encourage anyone who’s thinking of running a business to include every single thing you can think of in your budget—you’ll use it!

NP: How are you marketing and building a customer base?

JP: The main way we build everything is through collaboration. In the beginning, not having a physical space was a huge advantage. The group would perform at the Wadsworth Atheneum, The Mark Twain House, City Steam, and the Funny Bone in Manchester. Because of that, we were tapping into all of those places’ audiences. And then we developed a following as a group.

It was great because it took a lot of the marketing pressure off of us in certain ways. Plus we didn’t have the financial burden or time suck involved with running our own space. We were just going out—essentially like a band—seeing where we could book ourselves and then growing from there.

I think most business owners get excited about having their own office, studio, or performance space—but I would highly recommend seeing how far you can get without them. It’s a much lower-risk way to test the waters and see if you can develop an audience.

The Sea Tea Improv theater is located on Pratt Street in Hartford. (Photo courtesy Heartwood Home Renovations)

NP: So now that that’s changed. You have your own space and you do have that “time suck.”

JP: It’s changed a lot. It’s a lot harder having a space, because there are so many other things you have to learn stay on top of it. It’s different, but we’ve never been afraid to grow.

That being said, I absolutely love it and the theater is my second home. Probably my first home, if we’re measuring how much time I spend in it!

NP: Are you still “touring the band?”

JP: Yes. We still perform at City Steam every month. It builds our audience and it’s completely different to be in City Steam versus being in our own space, which is more like a theater.

Our touring company started with just seven people. Only four of those are still in the touring company, but we now have a total of 30 people.

NP: Regarding your journey as an entrepreneur, what have you learned along the way?

JP: You have to become an expert in everything from the top to the bottom. There’s no part of the job you can skip. Programs, marketing, finance, hiring, artistic work, education, community relations, sales... I’ve touched all of these parts of our company. I’m better for it, but it was and still is a huge learning curve. However, you can delegate.

Another thing I’ve learned is the importance of having a team that’s oriented to our mission. It’s easy to say: I like this person’s marketing or accounting skills. But with a startup, if they are not into your mission there’s going to be this drag. So when we bring people on, we look for them to really get what we’re doing and be on board in every way.

We’d rather train someone who loves comedy and loves Hartford than bring someone in and try and convince them of the worthiness of our mission.

NP: Speaking of loving Hartford, let’s talk about the importance of community and your role as Managing Director and Manager of the Touring Company. You’ve put together workshops and shows for the homeless, Alzheimer’s caregivers, teenagers, corporate executives, and artists.

JP: We love serving the Greater Hartford community. And we are very Hartford proud because there’s so much opportunity here. I’ve lived in other places and I think that’s a lot more unusual than people realize.

Our theater space on Pratt Street in Hartford is a great example. It was empty for almost 20 years. So we were not only able to have the space for ourselves but we were also able to fill a space for Hartford.

Regarding those programs you mentioned, we started those because we were approached by various companies: Travelers Insurance, Hebrew Health Care, Adobe, and Neighborhood Studios, as a few examples. Dozens—maybe hundreds, I’ll have to count—of companies have come to us asking what improv can offer them. It’s always so much fun to put together a customized program for them, because every group is different and every workshop is a new challenge.

But doing programs like that has turned into my personal favorite aspect of our company because it shows how our product can help people and connect to the community. Now that those programs have gone successfully, we’ve been asked to do them nationally.

In the past few months we’ve been flown out to Indianapolis to discuss improv for dementia caretakers and Baltimore to present improv for political organizations.

NP: We talked about some of the challenges to launching the startup. Is there anything you wish you could go back and change?

JP: Sure. For a start, things that seemed like a big deal in the beginning turned out not to be a big deal, which is just life in general. I wish I could go back and tell myself to enjoy it even more. It’s like watching a baby grow up—I miss those early days!

We’ve always struggled internally whenever we’re at a point of huge growth or about to take a big leap—like opening the space, or adding a lot of members. So I think having people move on from the company, letting leadership shift, or taking on new people has been challenging for us at times.

One of the great things for us is every single thing we do is different. So every time we make a mistake, the next day we have a chance to fix it. Our product is different every day. That’s what improv is.

A lot of our strength is how flexible we have been. In the beginning, there are things we could’ve negotiated better, like pricing. I think we undervalued ourselves at first. So yes, I would go back and tell ourselves to charge more.

NP: That’s a good tip. Experiencing failure and making mistakes is a huge part of the entrepreneurial endeavors journey—well, in anyone’s life.

JP: That’s true. For us, the most obvious failure we could have is no one shows up. And that applies to any business: No one buys your product. You create something awesome and no one wants it.

We’re dealing with that now. We’ve increased our number of shows so the audiences are smaller. A big challenge right now is making the experience still seem cool if there are only 10 or 15 people as opposed to 50 people in the room. So really controlling the audience experience.

NP: Improvisation and innovation seem to go hand in hand. How do you stay innovative?

JP: Innovation is literally our business—every single show and workshop we do is completely different and responsive to our audience. So we have a huge advantage there. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s still a regular business in that we have to sell our product to keep going. But doing improv teaches you listening and collaborating skills.

Our company is pretty flat. We have a lot people give us ideas. Our customers give us ideas all the time. And we just agree to them, which is how we stay innovative—listening to our audience and listening to the other improvisers who perform at our theater. For us, innovation is a habit.

NP: You’ve used the phrase “sell our product.” I usually ask other startups why someone needs their product or service. For me personally, I couldn’t live without comedy. I have to laugh every single day. So perhaps it’s an easy sell?

The Sea Tea Improv cast (Photo courtesy Nick Caito)

JP: Me too! I think people need comedy. When you go to an improv show, the audience is providing their ideas, suggestions, and information. Whatever is on their minds is being interpreted by a group of artists. That’s a great way to communicate with your city and communicate with local artists. So for performance, that’s the value.

We do a lot of classes and workshops and give back to the community. The value there is also huge because it gives people skills to listen to each other and speak in a way that doesn’t shut other people down. And everyone needs that.

We also do a lot of corporate training, which I like because we’re taking people’s habits and breaking them down. Then they realize that they’re not really listening to their employees or coworkers. So there’s a huge value there, too.

NP: Any advice for those other startups?

JP: I’m sure every startup says this, but whatever you think the costs are to open your business they are probably about a quarter of what they’re actually going to be. Being mentally prepared for that is very important.

People rush, but there’s no rush. If your business is going to last—if you want it to last—spend a while making sure you like it before you commit to a huge amount of debt whether it’s financial or time.

Also, don’t be afraid to grow slowly. I think with startup culture there’s an aggressive feeling that you have to do everything you can—burn yourself out, put in 100 hours a week, and grow big really fast. And that’s fine if it happens. However, there’s a lot of reward to growing slowly because you don’t fly too close to the sun and then totally fall apart.

We spent seven years building up to opening a space. And there’s no way we should’ve opened even one year earlier. We just weren’t ready. We wouldn’t have had an audience, we wouldn’t have had enough talented improvisers, and we wouldn’t have had the relationship with our neighbors and leaders in the city of Hartford to get a good lease and to work out great terms.

So my advice is to spend the first couple of years building relationships, because you’re going to have to cash in on every last one of them at some point!

At the end of the day, it’s all about the people. It’s human beings who are on your stage, in your audience, renting you your rooms, fixing your plumbing, and buying your products. Get to know them and treat them well, and you’ll be fine.

Learn more about Sea Tea Improv by visiting seateaimprov.com or follow on Facebook and Twitter @SeaTeaImprov.

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Hartford, CT: An Up-and-Coming Place to Live

February 10 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford CT Lifestyle 0 comments Tags: Connecticut, CT, employment growth, Greater Hartford, Hartford, Hartford region

Text from this piece by Staff Writer Miriam Weiner originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report February 7, 2017.

The most recent U.S. Census population estimates show the [Hartford, CT] metro area is attracting new residents, which is reflected by Hartford’s higher Net Migration score. The reason why is simple: jobs.

“The Hartford region has seen some strong employment growth in a number of high-productivity sectors, including professional, technical services, education and health services,” says Alissa DeJonge, vice president of research at the Connecticut Economic Resource Center.

What’s more, the types of job opportunities that are available in the Hartford area tend to pay well, with residents earning nearly $57,000 per year on average, which is significantly more than the average American’s salary of $48,320 per year. United Technologies Corp. provides employment to residents in the manufacturing and engineering sectors, and the region is home to some of the country’s largest financial institutions, including Aetna Inc. and the Hartford Financial Services Group.

“Hartford is known as the ‘insurance capital’ of the U.S., a title substantiated with Connecticut ranking No. 1 in the U.S. for insurance employment per capita, with many of those employers located in the Hartford region,” says Susan Winkler, executive director of Connecticut Insurance and Financial Services. “Connecticut is also home to the highest concentration of actuaries—many located in the Hartford region.”

But Hartford is hardly all work and no play. The metro area features a diverse selection of restaurants and cultural attractions. According to Paul Pita, CEO and executive creative director of Hartford-based digital marketing firm The Pita Group, “Hartford is a great place to live because residents have access to what they need: great options for housing, great educational options and a wide variety of lifestyle options for food, arts, culture, entertainment and outdoor activities.

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Startup Food Truck, Catering Business Finds Success in Greater Hartford

January 26 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford CT Lifestyle 0 comments Tags: catering, Connecticut, entrepreneur, food truck, Greater Hartford, Mercado, small business, startup

Heather Riedl, Co-Founder of Mercado, talked to Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price about turning a passion for cooking and working in the food industry into a successful business venture.

Heather and Roy Riedl are Co-Founders of Mercado, a startup food truck and catering business serving Greater Hartford.

NAN PRICE: You and your husband Roy founded Mercado in 2012. How did the startup come to be?

HEATHER RIEDL: Roy and I both started on different paths and ended up falling in love with restaurants.

Roy always had a passion for cooking. After college he went to Johnson & Wales University, where he got a culinary degree. I had been waitressing during college and really started my career in the restaurant industry in full force after that. We met while we were both working at Barcelona. He was a sous chef and I was wine steward.

After we got married, we were both still working in the restaurant industry, but doing sales for food and beverage distributors. We started doing catering on the side, just for fun to stay in the service segment of the food industry. Our catering business started to grow and we ended up getting a trailer to use for our base of operations. Then we got invited to the Coventry Farmers Market and it all just spiraled from there and turned into a total food truck business.

We still focus a lot on catering—it’s primarily what we do. But now we have this whole food truck business that was kind of a happy accident. But a good one!

NP: How is the business split between catering and the food truck? How do you find balance?

HR: We redid our logo and streamlined our concept this year when we launched our actual food truck. It’s shifted a bit. Last year I would say it was 90% catering. We had the food truck out at a couple select events, like the Coventry Farmers Market and the Wethersfield Farmers Market, and then the rest of our time was spent catering. This year, it’s been more like 60% catering and 40% food truck sales.

Balance is something that all entrepreneurs struggle with. We’re really figuring it out as we go. Last year was so different for us with our infrastructure. We just had the trailer, so we weren’t really able to take it out in the snow and cold weather.

This year, we have a more efficient truck, so we’ll be able to be out in more inclement weather. As far as catering, we stay pretty busy up until New Year’s, then—just like every other restaurant—it kind of drops off in January and February.

Our plan is to take some time and regroup and figure out where our business is going to head for the next season so we can be more efficient and do things better next year. But we still plan to try to be out at events that make sense for us. And we hope to be busy catering, of course.

NP: Let’s talk about some of the challenges you’ve faced as a startup.

HR: It’s been tough, but it’s also been so rewarding to figure out how to do things that I never in my life thought I would learn how to do. And same with Roy. For example, he knows how to fix a generator now. I don’t think he ever thought he would know how to do that.

As a startup you take on so many different roles—from human resources to accounting to sales and marketing—you have to wear many different hats. It’s challenging, but we try to talk to other businesses that have been successful and look to them for advice while we’re figuring it out on our own.

The food community is so tightknit, we can text other owners for advice or bounce thoughts about how to run our business better. It’s been invaluable.

NP: Tell me about the business concept. Why a food truck versus a storefront or renting space?

HR: Being a startup, we were really challenged financially, and I think financially a food truck seemed to make sense for us. It was a way to test the market without putting all our eggs in one basket. It gave us a chance to see if people even liked what we did. I mean, our food is eccentric—

NP: And delicious I have to add!

HR: Thanks! We weren’t sure how the public was going to react when we started as this boutique-type of catering, which worked for us, because we had a certain niche of clients that wanted eccentric, different food.

But in terms of pleasing the masses, we figured a food truck was a good way to get out and test a bunch of different markets to see how people felt about our food. And then, just personally, it worked with our family to not be tied to being open from 9-to-5 every day. It gave us a little flexibility to be there as our kids are growing up and to be present in their lives.

NP: It all goes back to that idea of balance.

HR: Exactly.

NP: In terms of your niche market, how are you marketing?

HR: It started really as a lot of grassroots marketing. We got a lot of referral-based business. We would cater a party at somebody’s house and they would tell 10 of their friends what a great job we did. That’s how we built our initial book of business.

And then really the food truck has helped with having things to post social media, creating visibility, and attending events that are targeting our demographic—like doing pop-up events at Little River Restoratives. That has gotten their customers to come and try our food and also our customers to go and try their cocktails. So, it’s good to develop these partnerships with other businesses. Especially in the Hartford area, because I think this area is totally booming.

Also, being involved in events like the Know Good Market, where people can try our food, has really expanded our business. It’s also given us credibility with the food truck and helped grow our catering business.

NP: And as far as that credibility, I’ve very similar conversations with Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ Co-Founder Jamie McDonald and Little River Restoratives Co-Owner Chris Parrot about that type of collaboration. In fact, that’s how you and I met—I was at pop-up event at Little River and Mercado was the featured food truck.

HR: Right! We collaborate with like-minded people who are going to do what they do and not really worrying about what everybody else is doing, worrying about what they do and doing their best every single time so that those people try their stuff, they try our stuff. It’s really the demographic of people that you’re trying to reach.

NP: With regard to the future, do you see any plans for a storefront or additional food trucks?

HR: I think if you aren’t thinking about the future, you’re just staying where you’re at. It’s a conversation Roy and I have had so many times too. We’re not really satisfied with staying in the same spot forever. We’ve both been that way our whole lives, always asking: What’s next?

And we always want to do bigger and better things. I think we have plans for the future—we have an idea of what we want to do it’s just figuring out how we want to make it happen.

NP: That’s a very entrepreneurial mindset, having to innovate and figure out what’s next. Any advice for anyone starting out?

HR: That’s tough. I feel like I’m not in any position to give someone advice because I’m still figuring things out as I go along.

I could share Roy’s advice that he gives me all the time. He always tells me to just put your head down, do your job, work as hard as you can, try to zone out everything else that’s going on around you, and focus on putting forward the best you that you possibly can.

I have a hard time listening to that advice! I think as an entrepreneur, you can kind of get caught up in everything else that’s going on in your community and trying to please too many people or trying to be something for everybody, rather than be everything to somebody.

You can’t please everybody. So you have to try to do what you do and do it best and negate all the other stuff around you so you stay focused on your true goal as an entrepreneur. That’s been the most helpful advice I’ve gotten.

NP: Did you have a specific business plan when you launched the startup, or did you just go for it?

HR: We totally went for it. I suppose it would be helpful to have a really specific business plan. But I think, as much as you make a plan—at least in the mobile food business—your plan never happens.

So we plan to make a plan for other things we’re going to do. But we really just figured it out as we went—and I’m glad we did, because our business has really evolved from what we originally thought it was going to be. I think if we had had a really strict plan, we wouldn’t have just gone with the natural ebb and flow of what was happening with us. But, I admire people who are able to stick to a business plan, because they are helpful.

NP: Well, not having one seems to be working for you.

HR: For now.

Learn more about Mercado by visiting www.mercadofoods.com or follow on Facebook and Twitter @MercadoEats.

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Startup Brewery Adds to New Hartford Community

January 20 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford At the CT Table 0 comments Tags: brewery, Brewery Legitimus, Connecticut, entrepreneurs, how to start a brewery, small business, startup brewing

Chris Sayer travelled around the world and developed a taste for good beer—and entrepreneurship. His experience studying in Belgium helped solidify his interest in the beer culture. A two-year stint in the Peace Corps in West Africa helped him refine some entrepreneurial skills.

Sayer’s employment experience doing sales and marketing for Harpoon Brewery, Belgian beer company Duvel, and the Coca-Cola Company helped strengthen his business skills, as did earning his Master of Business Administration at the University of Hartford.

Brewery Legitimus Co-Founder Chris (left) and Christina Sayer. “As with any business, there’s a balance,” says Chris. “Having each person know their role is critical.”

Chris and his wife, Christina, launched Brewery Legitimus in September 2016. Just weeks before the brewery’s opening, Chris took time to give Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price a tour of the brewery and share some startup advice.

NAN PRICE: You’ve been thinking about launching a brewery for quite some time.

CHRIS SAYER: Right. The beer bug for me started when I was studying in Belgium in 1998. When I came back, I thought I would really like to have a career in beer.

My time in the Peace Corps gave me a ton of time to think. I also learned a lot of skills I think are great for entrepreneurs, like how to think on the fly and how to improvise.

When I came back to the states, I began working toward a career in beverage and beer. I started at Harpoon Brewery and then landed my dream job in upstate New York working for Duvel.

I learned so much there about the European perspective on entrepreneurship, which is very different from a lot of traditional American models. They come in, they invest a lot of money, and then they kind of hold back a little bit and let people work with the capital they’ve been given.

NP: How did you end up in Connecticut?

CS: We came back to Connecticut in 2008 because Christina had a great job opportunity in human resources. We decided to live in Canton because we love the community.

I ended up working for Coca-Cola for five years. It was my recession job. Working for a huge organization like that is pretty much as far from entrepreneurship as you can get—your voice is not wanted nor appreciated. You’re told what to do and you do it. I knew I needed to get out because A) I was going to drive myself nuts or B) I was going to get myself fired.

NP: Because you always had that entrepreneurial mindset.

CS: Yes. You recognize that from talking to entrepreneurs and business owners.

NP: When did you start putting serious thought into launching a startup brewery?

CS: I started putting the business plan together around 2011. The idea had been vaulted away for a good 10 years.

NP: How did you choose the location?

CS: We chose to locate the brewery in New Hartford because it is a great community with amazing year-round outdoor recreation within miles.

Also site selection in the brewing industry is very important. We looked at about 15 sites all within a 20-mile radius of here and this site was perfect for what we needed. The water quality here is exceptional. We’ve got the concrete floors, we’ve got the high ceiling for tanks, and we’ve got space to grow in the future. It’s all here.

A huge bonus about where we are located is having a busy highway right here. There are between 11,000 and 18,000 cars go by every day—and on weekends there are even more.

It’s a good location. The water quality here is exceptional. We’ve got the concrete floors, we’ve got the high ceiling for tanks, and we’ve got space to grow in the future. It’s all here.

New Hartford is great. The community is extremely positive about having a brewery here. So site selection was based on a lot of things but the community vibe and feel was important.

NP: How is your presence going to contribute to economic growth the area? Will you be hiring?

CS: Yes, we’ll be hiring people as we grow. But also breweries are catalysts for bringing people to an area. We’ve really worked to partner with local restaurants and businesses to try to drive more traffic. Bringing people into town and building that synergy brings more business to the area. It’s a scenario where everyone wins.

I don’t think I’ve been in a town in Connecticut that’s more recreational than New Hartford. This town is geared toward recreation—with the river, the hiking trails, the skiing, the tubing, the fishing.  So it’s a great spot for us to be. With the addition of a brewery, New Hartford becomes a destination.

NP: A lot of breweries I’ve talked to use social media to generate a buzz before they even launch. Has this worked for you?

CS: I tell Christina: If we were opening a carpet store, no one would care. But breweries draw a buzz.

Working with local businesses whenever possible makes a huge difference as far as building that positive buzz. That and personal attention with the public—people love that personal attention.

The biggest thing I tell people with social media is to be on multiple platforms. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We like to make sure the same message goes consistently across all three platforms. Consistent messaging is really good with consumers.

NP: Any advice for other startup breweries?

CS: The biggest thing is do a ton of research on your industry talk to everyone you know. Take your budget and add about 50%. Because there will be surprises. There will be those moments where things cost a lot more than you thought they would.

So plan, plan, plan. Put your money into quality of process. Don’t buy junk. Buy the best equipment you can afford. If you can only afford to purchase a really tiny thing that’s high-quality, then maybe wait.

NP: So would you say start small?

CS: I would say start at a reasonable size where you know you’re going to be bringing in enough money to run the business successfully.

If we had this whole space but only a two-barrel system, we wouldn’t be able to cover our costs. The seven-barrel system allows us to cover our costs, make money, buy things, upgrade things, and do things for our customers.

So you need to go in at an appropriate level. If you’re a home-based business, you can go with whatever scale you’re comfortable with I guess. But for a brewery, you need to know what your costs are, be able to cover those costs, and make sure you’re going to be profitable.

NP: Anything else you’ve learned along the way?

Chris Sayer, Co-Founder of Brewery Legitimus.

CS: There are voices of doubt all around you. The funny part is that those voices of doubt are the first ones to congratulate you at your opening. They’ll say: We’re so proud of you! And you’ll wonder: Why did you tell me I shouldn’t take this horrible risk?!

But entrepreneurs have to be comfortable with risk. That’s key. You have to be good under pressure.

It’s also important to be able to separate roles. Christina runs a lot of things in the back of the house as far as the financing and accounting. I focus on the customer angle as well as production. As with any business, there’s a balance. Having each person know their role is critical.

I would also say: Be able to do things yourself. It’s really easy to have consultants or lawyers fill out paperwork and set up everything for you. You can do a lot of paperwork yourself and save money. If you can sit down and read and patiently go through everything, you can do it all yourself. You can do a lot more than you know.

NP: What has been the biggest challenge to getting the business up and running?

CS: Financing is one of the biggest challenges for any start up. Breweries are expensive. There’s no way around it. It’s capital intensive, but at least you’re making something people are passionate about.

Learn more about Brewery Legitimus by visiting www.brewerylegitimus.com or follow on Facebook and Twitter @B_Legitimus.

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CT Food and Drink Entrepreneurs

January 06 2017 Innovation Destination: Hartford CT Lifestyle 0 comments Tags: Back East Brewing Company, Bears Smokehouse BBQ, Black Hog Brewing, Blue State Coffee, Brewery Legitimus, Broad Brook Brewing Company, Cold Creek Brewery, Connecticut, CT brewery, entrepreneur, Firefly Hollow Brewing, Greater Hartford, Green Teahouse, Hanging Hills Brewery, Hartford Baking Company, Hartford Flavor Company, Hog River Brewing Company, Keyword tags: Hartford, Krust Pizza Bar, Labyrinth Brewing Company, Little River Restoratives, Olde Burnside Brewing Company, Onyx Moonshine, Peel Liqueur, Powder Hollow Brewery, Relic Brewing, startup, Still Hill Brewery, Toasted, Witchdoctor Brewing Company

“[As an entrepreneur] you have to be out there every day pounding the pavement, finding the new customers, figuring out what you can do to increase your sales, and also always looking at what’s next,” says Debra Raviv, Co-Owner of Toasted, LLC.

Food and drink entrepreneurs are key players in Connecticut’s entrepreneurial ecosystem—from dozens of local craft brewers and distillers, to philanthropic cafés.

Read up on the latest happenings in the Greater Hartford Region.

CT Breweries

“Craft beer is growing and increasing its growth percentages every year. It’s a good thing, people like it, and I think it’s here to stay.”
—Tom Rossing, Co-Founder Broad Brook Brewing Company

Back East Brewing Company

Black Hog Brewing

Broad Brook Brewing Company

Cold Creek Brewery

Firefly Hollow Brewing

Hanging Hills Brewery

Hog River Brewing Company

Labyrinth Brewing Company

“I always wanted to own my own business. When I reached a point in my life where it was realistic, I researched a lot of different business opportunities. In the end the one I thought was most viable was opening a brewery,” says Mark Sigman, Founder of Relic Brewing.

Olde Burnside Brewing Company

Powder Hollow Brewery

Relic Brewing

Still Hill Brewery

Witchdoctor Brewing

CT Distilleries

“We carefully chose Hartford as part of our name. We wanted to contribute something to Hartford. It means a lot to us to be a part of the fabric that Hartford is. How cool would it be to have a national brand that’s actually from Hartford?”
—Lelaneia Dubay, Co-Owner Hartford Flavor Company

Hartford Flavor Company

Onyx Moonshine

Peel Liqueur

“Entrepreneurship is such a valid, exciting, fulfilling career path,” says Onyx Co-Founder Adam von Gootkin.

CT EATS

“Hartford is the capital city of Connecticut and it deserves a more ambitious and adventurous drinking and eating scene.”
—Chris Parrott, Co-Owner Little River Restoratives

Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ

Blue State Coffee

Green Teahouse

Hartford Baking Company

Krust Pizza Bar

Little River Restoratives

Toasted

 

 

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Entrepreneur Brewer: Firefly Hollow Brewing

December 06 2016 Innovation Destination: Hartford At the CT Table 0 comments Tags: brewery, Connecticut, CT, Firefly Hollow Brewing, launching a brewery, startup

Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price visited Firefly Hollow Brewing in Bristol, CT and spoke with one of the founders, Bill Collins about the history of the brewery and how startup breweries throughout Greater Hartford are working to make Connecticut a destination state for beer lovers.

NAN PRICE: There is a story behind the launching of Firefly Hollow Brewing. Can you give us some background?

“Our goal is small and beautiful,” says Firefly Hollow Brewing Co-Founder Bill Collins.

“Our goal is small and beautiful,” says Firefly Hollow Brewing Co-Founder Bill Collins.

BILL COLLINS: One important thing to note about this story is: An entrepreneur cannot succeed alone. Period. This is a story about building a team and going for a long-term mission.

My part of story starts with me getting a homebrew kit from my brother back in 2002. Around that time was the first wave where we really had the renaissance of beer.

I used to get supplies from Brew & Wine Hobby, a homebrew shop in East Hartford, CT. I had been going to the shop for about five years when suddenly the shop’s inventory level started getting really low.

Over time I got to know the front room manager, Richard Loomis. When I first met Rich, we talked about different philosophies of brewing and eventually we discussed what was going wrong at the homebrew shop. It turned out that someone had bought it to basically provide them with income. The owner had some inclination about homebrewing, but it wasn’t a long-term vision of where the hobby shop should go.

NP: What do you mean?

BC: I play the long game. I’m the master of the short game—I can get stuff done really quickly, but I plan things long-term.

The owner didn’t see that, as a retail shop, the chief competition wasn’t the guy down the road. The chief competition was Amazon or Midwest Supplies—big places that always have things in stock.

I took a loan against my 401(k) and Rich and I bootstrapped and bought Brew & Wine Hobby. This was around 2010/2011. I had a long-term vision. I knew that, as a homebrew store, we needed to always have the basic stock plus some specialties and we needed to switch the shop’s orientation from being just a retailer to also being a community where customers could come into the shop for advice. They would swap bottles and really learn about beer.

Around this time, some of the fledgling breweries in Connecticut were starting out as homebrewers. Some of the homebrewers who have launched breweries with supplies from our homebrew shop include Back East Brewing Company in Bloomfield, Broad Brook Brewing Company in East Windsor, Powder Hollow Brewery in Enfield, and Top Shelf Brewing Company in Manchester.

Chances are if they’re in the Hartford County or just on the edges of Hartford County, they got their ingredients from Brew & Wine Hobby when they were homebrewers. We watched a lot of people going through the process of launching startup breweries, so we had a lot of people we could talk to. That was one of my goals with the homebrew shop—I wanted to be involved with other people watching them launch breweries.

NP: What did you gain from their experiences launching startup breweries?

BC: We figured out a couple things. We saw some people launch as production breweries—which was a valuable model at the time. During this time period, brewing laws in Connecticut heavily favored the distributor and institutions that didn’t foster small startup brewers. Back then you could be a brewpub or a brewery, you couldn’t be both.

Production breweries are fine, but they are more about the volume and less about fostering a local community around the craft. Some of the breweries have been able to switch gears from strictly production to onsite communities when the law change.

With a production brewery, you’re trying to become a known brand so you can become well known in every package store. Once you’ve established that, you can switch and acquire a brewery/brewpub license, like Firefly Hollow Brewing has, and you can do more limited-run releases of specialty beers.

NP: Let’s talk about the transition from owning the homebrew shop to deciding to launch a startup brewery.

Firefly Hollow Brewing Co-Founder Bill Collins (right) and Dana Bourque, head of brewery operations.

Firefly Hollow Brewing Co-Founder Bill Collins (right) and Dana Bourque, head of brewery operations.

BC: While we were running the homebrew shop, Rich and I hired on our first employee, Dana Bourque, who later became the head of brewery operations at Firefly Hollow. So there we were: two owners, one employee—I was (and still am) working full-time elsewhere and we were trying to get more people into homebrewing. This was still back in 2010/2011.

At the time, we’d attend to beer shows, such as the Rising Pint Brewfest, which is one of the top beer festivals in Connecticut. We’d go and serve our beer because our goal was to show the people that they could homebrew and legitimately make their own really great beer. We’d end up with lines that were two or three times longer than some other breweries. And we kept getting asked: Where can I buy your beer? If we told people we could show them how to make it, the response was that they just wanted the product.

NP: That must have been validating.

BC: It was. That was when we decided we really wanted to go down the path of launching our own brewery. But, needed to figure out how to do it.

NP: Tell us about that process.

BC: At the time, Dana asked us if it was okay to attend the American Brewers Guild, a well-respected brewer training distance learning program based out of Vermont. We said absolutely. He managed to get the one scholarship for it and he really did very well with it. He then did his internship at Willimantic Brewing Company.

This was in the summer of 2012. The Connecticut brewing law had just changed. And the law that changed is the one that’s most important to all the breweries in Connecticut right now: the Sunday beer law.

Buried in this law, which allows you to buy beer on Sundays, was the provision that you could open as a brewery/brewpub model that can serve pints directly to people without having to make food. This is referred to as a tap room model. This provision allows a small brewery to start up and be able to sustain itself locally until it can refine its product to the point where it can go to statewide, regional, or national.

The new law passed due to passionate arguments from one specific brewery: Two Roads Brewing Company in Stratford, CT. Two Roads has the first license for this model and became the first taproom brewery in Connecticut. One of our homebrew shop customers, Broad Brook Brewing, applied and got their license two months ahead of us. So they are license number two. Firefly Hollow has the third license in the state for the taproom model.

NP: So you had the licensing. At what point did you decide to launch the brewery?

BC: This was back in 2012. Dana, Rich, and I made the decision that we were going to launch a brewery. How were we going to do this? All of my money was tied up in the homebrew shop.

The homebrew shop had built have a large following of people who trusted us to help them with their beer and who appreciated our beer. We have a large network of friends and family, so we decided to use Kickstarter to show the viability of our business. We ended up raising almost $46,000 in 60 days.

At the same time, we were starting on the production and trying to find a location.

NP: How did you end up in Bristol, CT?

BC: We chose 10 towns and narrowed it down to two finals, Bristol and Rocky Hill, which is where I live. We selected Bristol because of the city’s commitment to renovating its downtown and because of the building—we wanted a building with character.

We had some big advantages. We knew people who had successfully launched startup breweries and were more than willing to talk to us. Also, we have a supply of different brewing ingredients at the homebrew store—if we were in a pinch one company can buy from the second company. The other real benefit we had was that because of the homebrew shop, tons of people already knew about us.

NP: You had a built-in following.

BC: Right, we already had a following. And that community was bigger than we thought. Nobody had a sense of how well it was going to work. Our opening night we had 200 people come through in a period of about four hours.

NP: Can we talk about some of the startup challenges?

BC: Supply and demand has been a problem. We opened with the ability to make approximately 55 barrels of beer a month. From the day we opened, we sold pretty much everything we could make. A couple limitations were dealing with labor—we didn’t have enough people on board since we were trying to bootstrap.

Another problem was we opened too small. We avoided being “really too small” and still opened too small. Right now we have basically expanded and doubled our brewery footprint by twice. We’re trying not to flood the market before there’s a demand for our beer—we’re trying to grow to catch up to the demand that’s already there.

By the way, when you’re starting out, you’re going to make a budget you’re going to make a plan and then it’s going to be wrong and your plan is going to miss tons of steps. That’s the way it works. Part of it is adapting, figuring out what supporting your business and what’s not.

NP: Your beer is featured in more than a dozen establishments throughout Connecticut. How are you getting in front of these restaurants and bars?

BC: Beer geeks. Basically people ask. And frankly all of the bar managers are need to research the local beer scene. They really need to know what’s out there, what’s new, and what will sell. We don’t actively market to them. We don’t usually even cold call anybody. We wait for them to approach us.

Is there a conscious thing we’re doing? No. what we’re trying to do is turn out a quality product in places that want it. And then making sure we manage the account properly.

NP: How are you handling distribution?

BC: Our initial stance was to do self distribution. About a year into it, we realized that with some of the places that wanted us and where we wanted to be in Fairfield and New Haven counties, with our limited staff, all you need is one traffic snarl and the day is dead. So we decided to use an outside distributor, G&G Beverage Distributors, for specific areas where we would like to be present but we don’t want to/cannot deliver effectively too at our size. Right now we’re self-distributed everywhere in Connecticut outside of those two counties.

NP: Do you plan to keep distribution local to Connecticut or will you expand to other states?

BC Our goal is small and beautiful. We know what we are. We don’t want to try to ship to California. Frankly, we’re not sure we want to ship outside of Connecticut. Each state’s laws are a new challenge. Each distributorship is a new challenge. Is that to say will never be available in Boston and New York? We probably will, but it may not be for another three or four years.

NP: What else do you foresee in the next few years?

BC: We want to grow to the point where we can sustainably supply as much of Connecticut as we want to supply. And right now we are at least two more iterations away. We’re currently up to 160 barrels of beer. Next year we’re going to get up to about 400 barrels. That’s the goal at least.

Have we hit our stride? Last year we started to hit our stride, so we went from three guys and a dream to having four full-time employees, about seven part-time employees, and a very sustainable business on a growth trend.

I foresee in the next two years that we’ll probably increase by another third for part-time employees and probably add two or three more full-time employees.

Are we going to be the next Sam Adams? The answer is no. We don’t want to be. Maybe Russian River Brewing, but frankly we wouldn’t be them—we want to be us. It’s one of those things, we don’t aspire or try to force something, if there’s such a demand for us to be that scale, we’ll be that scale.

You can always push more product onto the market, but we don’t want to be “push the beer” people. We’d rather have people ask for the beer. And if production gets slow and there’s not a demand for all of our stuff that will allow us to make beer that take a little longer.

firefly_mugFor example, making a lager takes three times as long as an ale and ties up a tank. We want to get to the point where were doing it because we want to do it and we’re fine. This isn’t us trying to go for the money. We want to get it to the point where the three of us are able to easily support our families. We have investors to back us, many of whom are our friends and families. We want to turn out a decent profit for them so they get rewarded. And we want to be part of a community. Right now we raise about $10,000 each year or different charities.

NP: That’s impressive. You’ve mentioned community a couple of times. In what ways is Firefly Hollow contributing to the community?

BC: More than half of our customers are not from Bristol. We bring in a lot of people to the downtown area.

NP: So you’re creating economic growth.

BC: Right. We bring people downtown and from the brewery because we don’t provide food, so people are finding places in this town to eat.

NP: Through the homebrew store, you’ve mentored many other startup breweries.

BC:I’ve helped and given advice to five other breweries that have launched. Why? Because people gave me the time of day when I had my questions. If you can demonstrate to me that you’re serious, then I’ll give you the time of day. It’s paying it forward.

Learn more about Firefly Hollow Brewing at fireflyhollowbrewing.com.

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Hartford Startup Brewers: Hanging Hills Brewing Company

November 11 2016 Innovation Destination: Hartford At the CT Table 0 comments Tags: beer, brewery, Connecticut, Hartford, small business, startup entrepreneur

Joe Ploof is an entrepreneur at heart—and a beer lover by nature. In 2009, encouraged by a close friend, Ploof decided to pursue his dream of opening a brewery and working for himself.

Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price toured Hanging Hills Brewing Company and talked with Ploof about how the brewery idea began and some of the challenges to launching a startup.

PRICE: Why launch a startup brewery?

Joe Ploof (right) and Brian Cox (left) Co-Founders of Hanging Hills Brewery.

Joe Ploof (right) and Brian Cox (left) Co-Founders of Hanging Hills Brewery.

PLOOF: I love craft beer and I love this industry. But also, I wanted to start a business. I didn’t want to work for anyone else.

And that adage: Only the self-employed individual will work 18 hours for himself so he doesn’t have to work 8 hours for somebody else makes way more sense when you actually do it.

PRICE: So the brewery was basically your idea. At what point did you bring in the other founders Brian Cox and Scott Stauffer?

PLOOF: Yes. I wanted to launch the startup independent of knowing Brian and Scott. But as time wore on, it was pretty apparent I’d need some help.

Brian and I went to beer school together at the American Brewers Guild back in 2009. When we met, we immediately clicked and realized our personalities would jive well enough to open our own business.

A mutual connection of Scott and mine introduced the three of us in April 2014. Scott brought to the table a business acumen that I lacked as a former teacher. Brian had been a process metallurgist at a steel producing facility. Both of us knew how to make beer. Brian knows tools and I have an idea about marketing, but neither of us had the wherewithal to be organized in a business sense. Scott, having worked at Aetna as a small project manager as well as Vice President Operations over at C.M. Smith, brought that level of expertise we just didn’t have.

Scott looked at the business plan Brian and I had been working on and made it more viable. He liked the numbers, he liked the bones of it, but he knew how to pitch it to people with money.

PRICE: Let’s talk about funding. You have a Kickstarter campaign, right?

PLOOF: Yes, we did Kickstarter we were fully funded. We used that money to put some really nice features into our tasting room, like the bar top and the lighting. Otherwise it was going to be much more generic. But we had enough to install the brew house.

We did two types of investments. We used private equity, which was about two thirds of our total raise. And then we did $100,000 loan from the Hartford Economic Development Corporation (HEDCO), which also gave us $100,000 line of credit.

PRICE: Let’s talk location. Why Hartford?

PLOOF: We started thinking about location back in 2012. We did some research and, at that time, the Connecticut beer scene was vastly underserved. In 2012 there may have been 15 breweries in the state, and six are seven of them were small nanobreweries.

We saw that Connecticut was underserved and I really like Hartford. Having lived in Portland, OR and Brooklyn, NY—two epicenters of cool—it was neat to come somewhere that didn’t have it all in one place.

In Hartford, you have to go searching for it. You sort of lift under rocks and you find the Hartford Denim Company or you knock on doors and you end up at Hartford Prints! or discover Colt Park is a really nice place to walk. We just bought a house in the West End, which is gorgeous.

So, it seemed like Hartford needed a brewery space—and this was before I knew Ben Braddock was going to open up Hog River Brewing Company, which is over in Parkville.

City Steam is here in Hartford I know they package their beer, but they are better known as a brewpub. And we wanted to be Hartford’s production facility. That’s kind of what we had in mind.

We also wanted to be a part of a slow-growing, cool movement. We hope that we can bring some level of expertise about craft beer to Connecticut.

PRICE: Hanging Hills Brewery opened in July, so it’s still relatively new. How are you getting the word out?

PLOOF: It’s funny, every weekend someone comes in here says: I didn’t even know you guys were here. But then, on the flipside, we had about 2,000 people combined show up between our two soft openings and our opening day.

There was a buzz. People knew we were opening. We had done a couple of events at Hartford Prints! We did a tasting at their Valentine’s Day event and we also launched our Kickstarter there. So people knew about us.

In most places, beer scene people have their fingers on the pulse and know when new breweries are opening.

PRICE: I’ve heard that before—people who want to know are in-the-know.

PLOOF: Right. And with Brian’s experience as the head brewer at Bluegrass Brewing and my experience as the assistant brewer at Back East Brewing Company and head brewer at the Cambridge House Brew Pub, people knew us from the scene. That helped a lot. And they knew we could produce quality beers, so that helped too.

Since opening, we have been heavy on the social media, because most of it is free. And we’ve run a couple of ads here and there. Scott has invested in ad space at Goodwin Park and we might run an ad in CTNOW.

We also created a video to tell our story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAuyehuFT3Q&feature=youtu.be

Really we’re trying to just make awesome beer. It’s been a very organic growth. It hasn’t been Tree House Brewing Company explosive, but the response has been really good so far.

PRICE: I’m going to quote from your website, “We are stewards of this community and will strive to support community organizations and agencies that share our ideals.” In what ways are you doing that?

PLOOF: I’m glad you asked that. Being a former teacher and a former Gay-Straight Alliance counselor, I wanted to partner up with a local LGBTQ mentoring group.

We released our Pride Pils pilsner and we’re donating a percentage of the proceeds to True Colors, which is a Hartford-based mentoring group for LGBTQ teenagers.

So that’s a start. We’ve also had Hartford Hot Several here and we’re featuring local band The Island of Doubt the night before Thanksgiving and later in December. We want to kind of be a music venue as well as civically minded company.

We also recognize our responsibility to the environment. To that end, we try to use locally sourced ingredients as much as possible. We brewed a beer with hops from Morris, CT, and barley grown in the Pioneer Valley. Using locally sourced ingredients reduces our carbon footprint and helps us support the local business community.

hanging_hills_beerPRICE: How is distribution?

PLOOF: We work with G & G Beverage Distributors to distribute in Fairfield and New Haven counties—we wanted to give the local accounts our attention. We recently signed with Craft Connecticut, so our beer is now available statewide. We opted to self-distribute in Hartford.

PRICE: What are the future goals?

PLOOF: We want to buy a canning line. We need to buy more stainless steel for the back and get another fermenter or two. A delivery van would be awesome. That’s the business side of things.

Ultimately we would like to be a New England regional brewery. We’d like to have a footprint up to Maine and then possibly as far south as Northern Jersey. And then sort of cap our growth at a certain level so we don’t have to take on more debt.

We have big ideas, but we also want to be normal people. We don’t want to have it too explosive.

PRICE: On that note, what have been the biggest challenges as a startup?

PLOOF: First and foremost, I would say opening up minds of the bar owners here in Hartford is a tougher nut to crack than more receptive markets. And the distributors in Hartford County have a lockdown on taps. Not having a distributor presents a challenge too, because people will only deal with distributors. A lot of people don’t want to deal with self-distribution.

Figuring out who we are as a company and controlling that narrative is another challenge, because my brain fires on a lot of different ideas. Brian is the same way. He’s always thinking and we’re always trying to figure out: Does it fit with what we’re trying to do?

So controlling that so that people know what to expect from us is really important to us. Trying to create a self-aware image.

Other than that, I think just getting people to know that we’re here has been a challenge.

PRICE: Any advice for people who are launching breweries?

PLOOF: It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have a lot of stress every single day and the results don’t immediately show themselves.

Don’t compare yourself to successful brewing companies, like Tree House Brewing. Initially we fell under the spell of comparing ourselves to Tree House’s model of opening your doors and selling every drop of beer in the house.

It’s not a fair comparison. Those guys caught lightning in a bottle. They had a great story and great beer and word-of-mouth flew, and that was awesome for them. But if you compare yourself to them, you’re not going to be happy with the results.

The big thing is just make the best beer you know how to and the rest will come.

Learn more about Hanging Hills Brewery

VISIT: www.hanginghillsbrewery.com
FOLLOW: Facebook | Instagram |  Twitter

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CT Startup Brewing Company: Powder Hollow Brewery

October 14 2016 Innovation Destination: Hartford At the CT Table 0 comments Tags: brewery, Connecticut, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, small business, startup

Michael McManus is Owner of Powder Hollow Brewery, a startup brewing company in Enfield, CT.

Michael McManus is Owner of Powder Hollow Brewery, a startup brewing company in Enfield, CT.

Innovation Destination Hartford Website Curator Nan Price met with Michael McManus, Owner of Powder Hollow Brewery, to find out how he turned a homebrewing hobby into a successful Connecticut brewery.

PRICE: Most breweries start with a homebrewing story. Did yours start that way too?

McMANUS: As a child I remember my grandfather always made wine at home. When I was a little older and I was in college, I enjoyed beer more than wine and I thought: Wouldn’t it be really cool if I tried making my own? I bought a homebrew kit, bought every book I could, and just really ran with it as a hobby.

PRICE: How did the hobby become a business idea?

McMANUS: When I graduated college, I got an awesome job at this huge engineering firm in Baltimore, MD. On day one I said: This is not going to work out. Immediately, I went home, started planning, and decided to open my own business.

PRICE: At what point did you realize your beer was truly marketable?

McMANUS: I was in college when I started brewing and of course all of my friends thought my beer was great. A few years after that, when I was still in Baltimore working as an engineer, that’s when I decided: All right, if this is truly going to happen then the product needs to be perfect.

I would invite my friends over and tell them they could drink as much free beer as they wanted. But I wanted an honest opinion, so I created a blind taste test—basically set up a bunch of different beers that made by professional brewers and me. I had people choose which one they liked so I would know if they were truly telling me whether it was good or not.

When I first started it was 50/50 my beer versus others. I kept brewing and brewing until more than 300 batches in everyone started picking mine every time. That’s when I saw that my homebrewing had gotten to the point where I could actually do something with it and I started raising the capitol to build a brewery.

PRICE: How did you fund the startup once you decided to launch?

McMANUS: I funded most of it myself and then I came up with a return program that I offered to other businesses in the area. About four restaurants gave me capital to help me get started. So I remain 100% owner in the company and the restaurants that invested basically get a percentage returned until their loan is paid back. This way it’s more of a business loan that’s not through a bank and the restaurants know it depends on the business succeeding. They pretty much invested in me, not the company.

PRICE: Where did you get that kind of business background?

McMANUS: I think it was always kind of in me. The way I think just makes sense for business.

But I also had some training in college. I went to a very small school in Vermont. One of the biggest things it takes pride in is teaching you that you can do it on your own. So I took a lot of business classes and financial classes and a lot of classes that taught you that you don’t need to depend on others, you can do it for yourself.

PRICE: It seems like that kind of shaped your business and entrepreneurial mind.

McMANUS: Absolutely.

PRICE: Did you work on generating a buzz before you opened?

McMANUS: The day the town of Enfield approved my location is the day I made all my social media. I put the word out about who we were, what we were going to do, and where we were going to be. Within two weeks we had more than 3,000 followers.

Social media is a huge bonus for anyone starting out. You can get people to know who you are and what you’re going to do before you even break ground. And that’s something we really couldn’t do on a budget 20 years ago.

powder_hollow_sign2PRICE: Powder Hollow Brewery opened in 2014. Tell us about the growth and business reach.

McMANUS: The first eight months we only operated in our tap room. People came, sampled the beer, and bought their pints and growlers to take home. Before we started, I knew I wanted to do distribution. I wanted to be able to have our tap room and send beer out throughout all the different restaurants and liquor stores. However, before we did that, I wanted to ensure that our product was proper and we didn’t bite off more than we could chew.

PRICE: Your beer is available in dozens of liquor stores and restaurants.

McMANUS: We’re in about 200 locations right now.

PRICE: And those are all in Connecticut?

McMANUS: Yes. All in Connecticut.

PRICE: Do you plan to expand out of the state?

McMANUS: We can barely keep up in Connecticut! But the master plan would be to go as far as we can.

We’ve gone from a team of three people to 15 people—and we are family here, so why wouldn’t I want to extend it out, hire on more people, and go out as far as we can?

If you look at the bigger breweries, like Dogfish Head Brewery, you can see how they grew and built their team and how they operate. That’s exactly what I want. I want to have this huge team under us where everyone works together and we can just do our thing.

PRICE: The brewery does a lot of local collaboration. Are you finding that’s helpful for marketing?

McMANUS: If we’re going to sell our product to a restaurant, why not work with that restaurant? We certainly didn’t come up with the idea of working with restaurants in the brewery, it’s just a perfect fit. We like to make beer. We don’t want to make food. Why not let the people who love making food showcase what they do in our location? It’s the exact same concept, the restaurants basically bring in an outside product and sell it. So we’re just kind of reversing the roles and working together.

PRICE: We talked a little bit about the future. Do you have a two- to five-year forecast?

McMANUS: It’s very difficult to have that kind of forecast with a brewery. Some breweries operate the way they are, and that’s great. And other breweries are in a never-ending expansion—and thankfully we’re in that never-ending expansion.

From day one, every penny we were making we were saving up for a bigger brewing equipment. We went from an 80-gallon brewing system to a 300-gallon brewing system in the first eight months we were opened. Right after that we immediately saved up and bought a canning line. Right after that we immediately saved up and bought a bigger fermenter—because with the amount of cans we were selling, we couldn’t keep up anymore.

So the two- to five-year year plan is in my head, but it’s always happening faster then you’re prepared, which is great. It’s a lot to manage this much growth so quickly.

PRICE: How do you deal with those challenges?

McMANUS: You take a deep breath, take a step back, look at all your options, and see which one works best for the company. Do we want to invest $50,000 in new tanks? Or do we want to invest in new equipment? Or do we want to hold back and have a bigger safety net for ourselves?

When you really look at your business as a financial engine, not just a brewery, it’s easy to make those decisions. You can say: Well, in an average month we can spend x dollars on grain, we can spend x dollars on hops and growlers and glassware. So in the worst case scenario how much money could I spend in one month? You better double that and keep that as your safety net. If there’s one month that I could potentially spend $50,000 because the hoodies, t-shirts, and glassware ran out, you have to have all of that. Because if not, 15 people don’t have a job anymore.

So when you just look at it as numbers, it’s much easier to make those decisions and say we’re ready to buy this now because there’s excess money in the company, or we are not ready because what if it’s not worth it?

PRICE: Any additional advice for those starting out?

McMANUS: The biggest message I can give to people who want to start something up is: You can do it on your own. You don’t have to hire lawyers to file your paperwork, you don’t have to go through the state’s process, and you can do it however you want to. I was 24 when I did it and it’s only been two years, but two years is a long time when so many businesses fail in their first few months.

PRICE: Do you plan to you enter any beer competitions?

McMANUS: I love the community of beer. I don’t send our beers out because I’m not into that type of competition. If I put a beer in front of someone and they love it, they love that moment and that brew right then and there, I don’t need a gold medal to tell me that.

To learn more about Powder Hollow Brewery, visit powderhollowbrewery.com.

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CT Startup Brewery: Black Hog Brewing

September 27 2016 Innovation Destination: Hartford At the CT Table 0 comments Tags: Black Hog Brewing, brewery, Connecticut, CT, innovation, small business, startup

Tom Sobocinski, Co-Owner at Black Hog Brewing told Innovation Destination Hartford about how the brewery got started, its plans for the future, and the importance of innovation.

IDH: How did the business get started?

bhb_draughtSOBOCINSKI: The idea for Black Hog Brewing was started in the fall of 2013 when some family friends connected on food and brewing. Brewmaster Tyler Jones was brewing at Portsmouth Brewery in New Hampshire while my brother Jason and I were operating a restaurant and bar in New Haven, CT.

I was very interested in the industry and would often chat with Tyler about home brewing. With a baby on the way, Tyler and his wife Racheal (The Ginga Ninja) decided to move to Connecticut. After a bit of planning, Black Hog Brewing was born. We were fortunate to find a brewery for sale in Oxford, CT and we started brewing in May of 2014.

IDH: Tell us about the startup’s growth and business reach.

SOBOCINSKI: Black Hog Brewing has a 15-barrel brewery system and currently 5 × 30 barrel fermenters, with two more 60-barrel tanks on the way. In just about two years we now distribute to five states including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.

IDH: Why Connecticut?

SOBOCINSKI: Jason and I were born and raised in New Haven, CT along with Racheal, who is from North Haven. We all have family and roots in the state and also felt that Connecticut needed some good craft beer. Several more breweries have opened since we did and we feel that the Connecticut beer scene has come a very long way, but still has plenty of room for growth.

IDH: Where do you see Black Hog Brewing in the next three to five years?

bhb_cansSOBOCINSKI: We want to continue to grow and want Black Hog to be a brand found in every bar in Connecticut. We plan to continue growing and producing our core ales (Easy Rye’ Da, Ginga Ninja, Granola Brown, and Nitro Coffee Milk Stout) while also producing more specialty products and series. We want to continue focusing on Connecticut ingredients as often as possible while producing very fun and well balanced ales.

IDH: What is the best business advice you’ve given or received?

SOBOCINSKI: I think it’s important in any business to always continue to innovate and try new things while maintaining great quality and good customer service as the number one priority. It’s very important to us that every batch of Black Hog beer that leaves our loading dock is perfect because every drop of beer represents who we are.

Learn more about Black Hog Brewing at blackhogbrewing.com.

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Do you have a Hartford success story? Are you a budding startup or a successful entrepreneur eager to share your experiences? Contact us today and tell your story!

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